Wild Cow Tales (10 page)

Then the daughter turned back to me, and she suddenly became very embarrassed and her good English broke and she spoke in the mother brogue of her parents and said, “Please do not be too hard on me father. You know he has had much trouble.”

I walked through the room and picked up my hat and started for the back door on the way to the barn. Mrs. Turner stopped me at the back door and asked where I was goin’. I told her that I didn’t seem to belong at even a church party in Scotty Perth’s town and that I would ride out tonight.

She said, “Ben, I am sorry for what’s happened,” and I said, “It’s no fault of yours.”

Dr. Turner followed me to the barn and gave me a letter that he said had come to the post office on Saturday, and he had gotten it for me on purpose so that he could give it to me when I came in on Sunday. It was dark, so I thanked him and shoved the letter in my pocket and rode on to the ranch.

He laughingly said as I rode off that half of the people in the church had been out there and looked for that watch while Scotty Perth was in the hospital with his leg, and he wondered how I had managed to find it. That was a secret and I didn’t answer him.

The fact was that I was ridin’ one day and the sun shone on it and caught my attention. It would be my guess that when Scotty Perth’s horse fell from under him, the fall threw it from his pocket and the chain was tangled in a low-hangin’ limb just the right height for a cowboy horseback to reach up and untangle it. And while they had looked on the ground for it, it was safely fastened to the limb of a tree.

As I neared the big double gates of the ranch, a thought occurred to me—Why didn’t I just take those gates off their hinges to where they wouldn’t be swinging back and forth and leave the gates open and take my chances on a few cattle driftin’ out into the road? After all, I would rather have ’em in the road than in the pasture—so why leave the gate shut?

These big double gates had a high arched pole at the top runnin’ from one gatepost to the other about six feet above the top of the gates. It is true that it was dark, but days and nights seemed to mean about the same to me. So I tied my lariat rope in the middle of each gate one at a time and threw my rope over the big pole that ran from gatepost to gatepost above. Then I tied my lariat rope to my saddle horn and lifted the gate upward off the bolt hinges and then let them drop back to the ground. I pulled the gates back to one side out of the way and propped ’em up against the fence and rode on to camp.

I built up a fire at my camp and read the letter by campfire light. It was from Mr. Merideth at the bank. He was instructin’ me to round up all the cattle as soon as possible because of the probability of bad weather, but not to ship any more cattle to the Kansas City market until I wired him and he could wire me back further instructions. I crawled in my bedroll and went to sleep.

When I waked up the next mornin’, the weather was still changin’ for the worst and as I laid there in my warm bedroll I began to wonder if maybe really the bank was at fault—and if they were, why they had taken advantage of Scotty Perth. With the whole town taking up for Scotty Perth and the fact that I hadn’t been able to hire any help from July to late September to ride with me all added up to the conclusion that there was somethin’ bad wrong. I had done a good
deal of business with Mr. Merideth and the Kansas City bank, and I couldn’t bring myself to think they were at fault. But nobody had tried to fill me in on any of the details of the Scotty Perth deal.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it seemed that all the townspeople knew was that Scotty Perth had said the bank was “takin’ ” his cattle away from him. If there were some undiscovered facts on either side I was the one caught in the middle, and actually all I was tryin’ to do was to make more money gatherin’ wild cattle than I would ordinarily be paid for common ranch work.

I decided that I had better crawl out of that bedroll and move my camp off of Teepee Rock down into a canyon in the lower pasture. I had already found a good camp place on the west side of the canyon wall. It wasn’t exactly a cave—it was just where a big ledge hung over and there was a big curve in the canyon wall that would give protection from the north wind—and bein’ on the west side of the canyon the mornin’ sun would make it a little more bearable.

I caught the horses that I used mostly for pack horses and spent the day movin’ my riggin’ and camp to under the ledge in the lower pasture. I took an ax and cut some poles and built a makeshift fence around my camp. My horses were all pets, and I had to protect my feed and my camp by fencin’ them out.

When I finished movin’ it was late afternoon, but I still had time to drag a few dead trees up by the horn of my saddle for firewood. Dead timber was plentiful and by dark I had enough to last me for a week or two.

The next few days I tried callin’ these cattle since it was gettin’ cold weather and we had already had some light snow (that hadn’t stuck on the ground). I thought it would be gettin’ near enough feedin’ time of the year if these cattle had ever been fed that they would come to call. Another thing that caused me to think of this—I had remembered that when Scotty Perth throwed his high-pitched voice at the stock pens that old Scotch cow had thrown her head up and bawled a time or two after Scotty had gone.

There was still lots of cattle in the pasture. I didn’t know how many, but there was bound to be over two hundred head and I had gathered two hundred and sixteen. For several mornin’s I rode down in the valley and tried all the different cow calls that I had ever heard. But I had never gotten a cow to answer nor act like they knew anything about the sound of a human voice.

I waked up one mornin’ and a good snow had fallen in the night, but the ground was still a little too warm and unless it got colder this snow would melt by night. I cooked my breakfast and saddled Mustang. I didn’t pick Mustang for any particular reason—it was just that he had several days’ rest and it was his time to do a good day’s work.

My horse was standin’ tied close to camp, and I don’t know why but I had walked back to stand by the fire and warm while I thought about what to do. A pretty good wind was building up and there was a dark bank formin’ in the northeast. It was just a little hard to do a day’s ridin’ when ever’thing you had tried in the last few days hadn’t worked, and I didn’t have a new plan to try this
mornin’—except I intended to ride down into the valley to see if any cattle had drifted through the gates at the road.

So far as I know I crawled out of a cradle and on to a horse. Although I had a home, I had been a cowboy and drifter and camped all over the Southwest. I had never known any of the pangs of loneliness that I had heard people talk about, and I had never hated anybody and up till now didn’t suppose that anybody had been more than a little bit mad at me. But now to have had a whole town and the territory around it to say the least shun me for four months, and for that damn Scotchman to have hated me for every minute that I breathed, was a new and unpleasant experience. With the storm clouds hoverin’ over and the wind cold, and so far from Texas, I guess for the first time in my life I must have been lonesome—and it wasn’t a good feelin’.

There was a pretty brisk wind blowin’ up the canyon and directly I was brought out of this mood by more than a few cattle bawlin’ down the canyon below me. This bawlin’ increased and got louder, and I could tell that some of these cattle were on the move. Then I heard a faint sound of somebody singin’. I stepped on my horse and went to pushin’ down off the canyon wall as fast as was safe horseback.

The singin’ began to get clearer and cattle were bawlin’. As I rode out into the openin’ where I could see down into the valley there was Scotty Perth on his shay. He had set all the gates open to the corrals and the gate to the trap that joined this pasture and was drivin’ his horse at a slow walk to the hooked shay around in the
valley and in a high, melodious tone was singin’ “Mother MacCrea.”

Scotty Perth was a lone wolf and very seldom had anybody to help him with his cattle, and with his beautiful baritone voice he had a call all his own and those half-Hereford Scottish-bred cattle seemed to have a real appreciation for his voice and selection of music. As he rolled the R’s and clipped the words and hit the high notes in “Mother MacCrea,” all the cattle in that lower pasture were bawlin’ and comin’ to the valley.

To see all those cattle out in the open was a beautiful sight to me since I had ridden so long and hard, but Scotty Perth’s singin’ “Mother MacCrea” wasn’t necessarily music to my ears.

There was a long strip of slick, shaley rock at the bottom of the slope just before the turf of the valley started, and many a herd of cattle had gotten away because a man can’t run a horse across that shaley rock without takin’ an awful chance with life and limb, including the possibility of injury to his horse. I circled fast to the east of these cattle, and they were movin’ at a good trot and my only hope to offset Scotty Perth’s musical ability was to charge these cattle from the east and turn ’em fast through the open gates at the road which was no more than a quarter of a mile west of the gates that he had set to call them through at the north, which would lead them into the valley.

The clouds were movin’ in fast and the wind was becomin’ variable, which helped me some in that Scotty Perth’s singin’ wasn’t reachin’ ’em quite as steadily as it had been when the wind was blowin’ up the canyon.
When these cattle were about the same distance from the west gate as they were from Scotty’s north gate I had made it around to the east edge of the shaley rock slope. Scotty was drivin’ his shay at a slow walk toward the corral gates and had lowered his tone because he knew he had the cattle followin’ him. He hadn’t yet discovered me because I was ridin’ in the timber as best I could behind him until I had gotten to the east side of the shaley rock. The cattle weren’t more’n a quarter of a mile from his corrals or from the west gate into the road.

When you are ridin’ a horse in a run and he hits a spot of slick rock, it is natural for him to “scotch” in order to steady himself, which increases the possibility of his falling. (If you are ridin’ a horse at a trot or fast gait on rock he will extend himself into a run without any thought of “scotching.”) This was a slim chance and it might not work, but if it didn’t put the cattle in the road it would put them back up in the canyon and it would stop that business I had been hearin’ about “gatherin’ the cattle in a shay.”

I got out on the slick rock with my horse in a trot, took my jacket off, slipped my feet out of the stirrups so in case my horse fell I wouldn’t be hung to him, and broke into a top-speed run, swingin’ my jacket over my head and squallin’ as loud as a Texas cowboy could squall and charged these cattle even before Scotty Perth knew I was in the pasture.

Disturbing weather, variable winds, and fast-movin’ clouds add to the nervousness of cattle, and when I ran towards them they were about ready for a stampede anyway.
The only glance I got at Scotty Perth durin’ the wild ride was when his horse had tried to run away to get out from in front of the chargin’ cattle. The herd hit his fence about two hundred yards west of his gates, and as they piled up in a wad some of ’em found the road gate that I had opened the several nights before and the race was on.

I didn’t lose a cow gettin’ through the gates, but they did knock some of the fence down. I squalled, hollered, and waved my jacket at them until I ran ’em for about five miles. When they had begun to “wind” and slow up, I dropped back to give my horse a breather and let them slow down for the drive to town. Any time you can wind a bunch of wild cattle, it makes ’em easier to handle for the rest of the day.

The cloud had developed into a cold drizzle, and by the time we were halfway to town the roads were gettin’ muddy. I had gotten pretty well soaked by now and kind of chilly, and my horse was wringin’ wet with sweat and steam boilin’ out of his flanks from all the ridin’ that I was havin’ to do in that heavy, wet dirt.

At the edge of town about two thirty that afternoon, somethin’ boogered these cattle, and they made a wild run back up the road toward the ranch. I rode at full speed about three miles in front of ’em, hopin’ that nothin’ could happen that would cause my horse to fall. The herd finally quit runnin’, and after they stopped they milled around in the road awhile and started driftin’ back towards town.

In about an hour and a half after the run started, I
had them up close to where they first stampeded and wondered what caused the first run and was hopin’ whatever it was would be gone or else that they wouldn’t run from it again.

When a bunch of wild cattle go to findin’ buggers and runnin’, you needn’t expect anything but trouble until you get ’em where you started.

I knew Mustang was pretty well spent by now, and I hoped that I wouldn’t have to call on him for too much more. I managed to wing the cattle into the railroad right of way and towards the stockyards. I knew that if a train came along or some old woman hung out her washin’ or just any damn thing happened, these cattle would run again. But I took my chances and rode just as far away from them on the other side of the railroad as I could. I didn’t dare strike a run, so I trotted on to the stock-pen gates and propped them back with some bales of alfalfa hay. The cattle were still comin’ and bawlin’ as they had been doin’ all that day.